Good Reads

One of the many blogs I read is Whatever, the personal blog of sf author John Scalzi. He writes anything from updates on what his cats are doing, to political diatribes, to ramblings about what he's up to with his writing, be it being offline because of a deadline, or the schedule of a convention he's attending or speaking at. He's an excellent writer, and well worth reading; even if you disagree with him politically, he makes his arguments clearly and cogently, and is always thought-provoking. Well, maybe not the butter-eating. Josh would probably argue that the bacon thing is, though.

Anyway, one of Scalzi's pet projects is something he calls The Big Idea. The feature combines pimping other authors' works with insights into how they come up with their ideas. Today he posted this. Go read, and then follow the links to the pdf of The Patriot Witch. I'm 129 pages in, impatient to finish, and planning to acquire the books as soon as I reasonably can.

Garden Dreams

I made a sizable Amazon order with a portion of our tax return, and among the books I ordered (and received today) was one I hadn't known about until mere moments before ordering it. I had already decided I wanted a copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma (fantastic book, I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the politics of food - which you all should be!), but when I made a search for it, I found Second Nature also recommended. When the box containing this portion of my order arrived today, I had to make a choice about which eagerly-awaited volume to crack first. It was actually something I had to think bout; I'd read Omnivore's Dilemma, but I've been wanting to read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle pretty strongly too. Still, my desire to garden is always pretty intense at this time of year, so the gardening book won. Astonishingly, I've already read two or three chapters... but this wasn't supposed to be a review of that book, but rather an outline of what I want to do with my garden.

I got ambitious this year - but I always do. I just have half a chance of realizing my dreams this year! Maybe. At that, I confined myself to vegetables I think we have a good chance of actually eating, veggies we like.

Seeds I bought:

sunflowers
a mix of flowers to cut
tomatillos
a mix of heirloom tomatoes
a lettuce mix
mustard greens
leeks
snap peas
blue lake beans
cranberry beans (to dry)
eggplant
jalapenos
poblanos
zucchini
pumpkins

I'm expecting to need to use containers if I want to try to grow all of these, especially since so many want "hot, well drained, sunny" locations. I have yet to go do anything with my garden beds this year, and they're not that big; perhaps I need to go invest in some bricks to make new ones! I may also need to remove (or maybe just move) one or two of the rosebushes along the south-facing fence. Expect blood.

Blargh!

So, we agreed that with some of our tax return, I could buy some books that have been hanging out on my Amazon wishlist for - years, some of them. So, I happily spent some time yesterday at knitting composing and submitting an order, gleefully asking around about certain knitting books I've been ogling for some time and the like. And... the payment won't go through, and so my orders are beginning to be cancelled. We're guessing that what's happening is that our bank is freaking out about all the unusual activity on our account, and trying to protect us by not putting these abnormal requests through. I appreciate their caution... but really, this activity is all right!!!!

35. Book List

Saw this over at Lennon's blog, thought it would be a good one for me, bookworm that I am.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love. (or, since I'm apparently unable to underline, put an ascii heart: <3)
4) Put 6 stars next to the ones you are reading******

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen <3
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling <3
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I assume pieces count here...)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman <3
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott <3
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien <3
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll <3
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia <3
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen <3
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins-
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery <3
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett <3
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White <3
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle <3
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams -
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas <3
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Remember that I was a lit major in college, and therefore I read a number of these for coursework.

We're still sick here... although the Infanta seems to remember it only when she's trying to nurse, and has to keep coming up for air between swallows.